Speaking as an Anheuser-Busch shareholder AND a Catholic, I resemble that remark.
I hesitate to get in the middle of this, I hate the sight of blood - especially my own, but the role of personal interpretation is never black or white, I think, which makes arguments about them frustrating. At the risk of sounding nominalist (whatever THAT is) I like to say that whatever else the Incarnation may mean it clearly reminds us that God is AT LEAST as mysterious as anyone else you ever loved, and that finally, after all the conversation is done, the consummation of knowledge will lie in an intimate relationship of mutual self-giving.
The pseudo-nominalist part arises from my certainty that everything I say about God (except this, maybe) is more false than it is true, but it is still of very great importance to try to say what is true about Him the best we can.
But I think that your "devolution" of doctrine is a little inaccurate. The obedience and assent I owe the hierarchy and the magisterium is, especially in those areas where I have done some little study, active, questioning, and probing.
Look in an operation, I got a garbled radio command: Bogie is running from the North gate of the stadium toward the West gate. (I'm at the Southwest gate.)
There's not time to question. My partner runs toward the west gate on the outermost way, I take the middle way while scanning to my right at another way he could be running. At the end of the story I come upon a pile of people just in time to grab an arm sticking out so that somebody else can cuff it.
I didn't know much, I had lots of questions, but there was no time. I obeyed the best I could, success: cuffed bad guy having the pepper spray washed off his face.(A very pleasant bad guy as it happened, just gets a little rowdy in his cups -- all in good fun.)
Later I ask the captain WHY the #*#@#*%! he didn't give more a precise description of where the bogie was -- and we began developing a new approach to communications.
But however precise we get, in the event there will always be personal interpretation to some unavoidable exten. But it's important for the entire team to be speaking the same language and to have basic notions decided. We're at war here, and it shouldn't be against each other.
I'm not sure how far to take the analogy, but I think it has some usefulness.
I'm glad you recognize that. What we see in the early church and throughout church history is a wide variety of interpretations of a great many things, but in the cases of the first several councils, starting with the first one in Jerusalem recorded in Acts, there was a consensus on the main and plain doctrines of the faith. Same goes for the Council of Nicea. The early church was not nearly as dogmatic as some seem to think, but on the essentials they were staunchly dogmatic and rightly so.
The period in which Irenaeus was writing "Against Heresies", Irenaeus was responding in particular to the Ebionites and the Docetists who were on opposites extremes of the same issue. The Ebionites were Jews who denied the Deity of Christ, whereas the Docetists were Hellenists dualists who denied the Humanity of Christ, both cited Scriptures, twisting them beyond their clear meaning. I happen to agree with Irenaeus that the church correctly interprets the Scripture pertaining to the essential doctrines of the faith. However, history proves that interpretative function does not reside in any particularized church, but is with unanimous consent.
What is preposterous is the assertion that the Roman church is the sole arbiter of Christian truth, and the sole interpreter of Scripture, when history is replete with contradictory interpretations coming out of the Roman church, contradictory doctrines being taught by the Roman church, Roman popes interpreting Scripture in contradiction to the consensus of the church fathers. Councils even that are claimed to be "infallible", have contradicted each other, most may remember the iconoclast controversy, whereby one earlier "infallible" council condemned icons, only to have a later "infallible" council reverse that decision and condemn the earlier council's canons as heresy. Now, I don't know about you, but when you have two directly opposing decisions by two "infallible" councils they cannot both be right nor infallible. It is a logical fallacy to purport such a thing , as a violation of the Law of Non-contradiction, but Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox both make that very assertion, and expect rational people to actually believe it.
But it's important for the entire team to be speaking the same language and to have basic notions decided.
I agree, which is precisely what the first several councils did, on the main and plain things of the essential doctrines of the faith, resulting in the Nicene Creed.
We're at war here, and it shouldn't be against each other.
I wish that were the case. If you can convince Rome to renounce the anathemas of the Council of Trent, renounce it's position on Justification, renounce it's dogmas of Penance, Assumption of Mary, Immaculate Conception, papal infallibility, purgatory and renounce it's position on petrine primacy, then there will be a basis for discussion based on truth.